Rooks and Romanticide (9 page)

“My lord,” Levi whispered, smoothly cutting the silence, “judging by the eyes you give me, you like me a little too much. You like me more than you expected to, and you hate yourself for it. And that's why you'll agree to many more meetings with
the ace in your sleeve
.”

Cain choked on a laugh two notes shy of a scoff, but gathered composure again quickly. The nerve! He lifted his chin, narrowed his eyes, and spat, “As long as my hidden ace remembers his place. Any amount of
intrigue
will never change that, I promise.”

“Oh, trust me,” Levi murmured. “I will always remember my place so long as I am graced by your presence.”

“You confuse me,” Cain hissed, motioning for Levi to go away. “This meeting is over. Where are you from, Levi? How will I get in touch with you to meet again? This is stupid, you know, setting up a deal like this and lacking such basic information about you. You're not a
whore
or anything! You're employed by me now. But maybe anonymity is the smart way to do it. I don't know. I don't care.”

Levi stood, smiling down at him. But his eyes were distant. He said nothing. He turned and began walking away, footsteps bouncing off the stone and woodwork of the nave. And Cain was left reeling, again. He frowned darkly, watching him go, foolishly turning his back on an armed stranger.
What a bastard.

But lo and behold, Cain's fingers relaxed on his revolver, and Levi stopped near the sanctuary doors to say over his shoulder, “I'll send a packet with all the information you'll need to contact me. That way you can have it on file, as verification of our understanding here, which I presume is important to you. Therefore should you ever suspect me of betrayal, you'll have documented proof of our deal, evidence of my injustice. Is that satisfactory, my lord?”

“Why not?” Cain huffed, standing in turn among the pews. Levi eyed him in silence a moment longer, then pushed through the heavy doors and disappeared into the night outside.

Cain lingered, his thoughts torturing him.

He didn't like the way Levi had already wormed under his skin and made a home there, flustering him, managing to garner a bead of Cain's trust even amid strict and deeply structured misgivings.

But then the discomfort of being alone in the church began to creep in on him, and he hurried out to the mausoleum near the cemetery, where Aunt Ophelia and Mr. Renton loitered in waiting. Although Aunt Ophelia asked many questions, Cain couldn't get himself to even lie in reply as they made their way back to the Dietrich manor in the fog that pooled beneath the streetlamps.

 

 

T
HE
MESSENGER
navigated the flood of holiday festivities out on the streets and delivered the package to the Dietrich footman the next day, as promised. It was a string-tied package, including an apartment number at some lodgings on the Rue and a number of written references from previous contractors that Cain didn't care about at all. It seemed silly, references for a gunslinger. It seemed foolish for anyone to admit they'd hired a hit man at all. He didn't dwell on it.

The package contained books too, which was what caught his interest and held it the strongest.

There were two books—three of Poe's works bound in one leather volume: “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Spectacles,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and one individually published poem, “The Raven.”

Cain scoffed, throwing the little paperback down on the package torn open on his desk.

“Whatever,” he said, pushing the items to the side, where Weston waited patiently for directions. “Put the information into a file and throw the books on the shelf in my room. Now, to discuss more important matters….”

Uncles and agents were waiting. The package had interrupted a Dietrich meeting. Cain turned his attention back to the men smoking on the couch in his office as Weston hurried out with the papers and books. Uncle Bradley, and Mr. Renton, and Rodney, and Graham. And Aunt Ophelia, sifting through the shelved books in the other corner of the room, humming to herself and pretending not to be involved.

Cain sighed, cradling his head in his fingertips. He had to struggle not to get caught up in the memory of Levi in the church, candlelight and moonlight marrying so flawlessly in his mysterious eyes.

“So,” Cain said, “Uncle Bradley, tell that railway we'll gladly help fund their new plans as long as we get at least twenty percent of their biggest profit. Mr. Graham, you still owe me that check from the last shipment of your
goods
from the Orient, and Rodney, Mr. Renton—what's the word with the robberies on D'Laim? Are the Ruslanivs involved? Hey, are you still planning on screwing that Ruslaniv order from Bohemia? I mean, it's just a bunch of worthless junk for their wives and daughters. It doesn't really matter, does it? Even in silk and pearls, they'll always look cheap.”

 

 

T
HE
R
USLANIV
library housed thousands of books.

The black walnut shelves followed the walls nearly to the vaulted ceiling, lamps casting light over the second floor and its banisters, stepstools, and ladders. Globes and an army of collected figurines sat among divans and leather sofas and the custom-carved oak desks. The room was a vast chamber, gothic and elaborate, dim even with its regal stone fireplaces continually ablaze. It might have been spooky to those who didn't find it either oppressive or elegant.

Near the servants' entry sat a candelabra on a smooth-surfaced marble table, and when this candelabra was twisted sharply to the left, there was a creak as muffled and ominous as if the large house were groaning, the snap of a hidden latch, and the screeching moan beneath the floorboards of a secret doorway opening onto a private lounge.

That was where Levi liked to hide away with a stack of books, the company of which never failed him, as the company of others almost always did.

And the secret room was exactly where Eliott found him on All Souls', the day after All Saints', when all the faithful were burning candles for the departed and crossing themselves before paintings of holy figures. It was just as Eliott had suspected, because this had been Levi's preferred haunt since he was ten years old, closing himself in with all the leather and velvet furniture and the iron-faced hearth.

Eliott jerked on the candelabra and as it was revealed, greeted the secret room with a sunny grin and one hand propped on a hip, the other waving idly.

“Hello,” he singsonged. He waltzed in even though Levi refused to acknowledge his arrival. No, Levi kept his nose in the book he was reading, legs drawn up and crossed beneath him on the sofa, and Eliott lingered in the doorway, false shelves hanging open. His smile faltered. For a moment he was struck by a nostalgia drenched in something heavy and forlorn, and he couldn't place a rhyme or reason to it. There had been many a rainy, boring afternoon during which he'd searched the house over for Levi, only to find him holed up here and reading away—lore, history, theology, science, make-believe. And he'd always looked just like he did now, quiet and gone. Like there was no possible reason he could kill someone in cold blood, like there was no physical way he could manipulate someone as flawlessly as the devil himself, seductive and sweet and carefully calculated, painfully detailed in his motions and never satisfied until he was triumphant.

In the secret room, Levi seemed harmless, and sometimes Eliott wondered if, perhaps, that was what destiny had wanted of him in the first place.

Eliott heaved a dramatic sigh, skirting the back of the couch. He leaned down over Levi's shoulder, purposefully getting in the way. Levi was absorbed in one of Machiavelli's works, this one another long-winded and dreary piece that Eliott could have cared less about.
La Mandragola
, the page said at the top, and Eliott sighed another heavy sigh, in need of attention.

Eliott had been introduced as a cousin and joined the Ruslaniv family in their manor when his mother married Lord Ruslaniv's half brother nine years ago, he'd been little and pretty-eyed with thick auburn locks already past his ears, ready for nobility. And Levi had always found it so easy to ignore him. He ignored him again then, in the secret room. Surely he'd turned it into a talent.

Eliott reached for the book in Levi's hand—which Levi effortlessly held too far away for him to snatch from behind the sofa. So instead Eliott grabbed a handful of blond and moved it out of Levi's eyes. It was the normal pestering act until Levi finally gave in. Which he did eventually, as always, but over the years it had gone from well-mannered scowls and polite fists to obligated sighs and cold glances. Just such a chilly glance finally landed on Eliott, and Eliott smiled.

“Your father's looking for you,” he announced, even before Levi opened his mouth. “Dinner's to start, and then prayers for the Faithful Departed, and after that, BLACK's meeting in the billiards room to clean guns. You coming?”

Levi's silence was curt. But maybe he was just traveling back from the places the books took him, wherever they were and however great they were to him. Far away, where brothers weren't dead traitors and families didn't kill out of vengeance like angry children smashing each other's toys out of spite. Levi closed his book and tossed it at the pile next to him.

“Of course,” he grumbled.

“You've got a lot on your mind,” Eliott guessed. He was focused on the crease between Levi's brows that had formed a permanent home there recently. “You only get that look when you're really eaten up by something. The last time you had it was before Quinton and the others left BLACK.”

Levi left his books where they were, which was fine because nobody would touch them. He climbed off the sofa as if it were a great task to do so, motioning for Eliott to follow him as he slipped a hand into his hip pocket, just below that oversized sweater of his. It was old. It needed to be thrown out. The buttons had all come off at least once, and Eliott's mother had sewn them back on for him. Some of them weren't even the same buttons anymore.

Eliott was pretty sure the sweater had been Quinton's at one point.

 

 

D
INNER
IN
the Ruslaniv manor was four-star, per usual, at the long polished oak table in the main dining hall. An ancient-looking iron chandelier hung, studded with fat red candles. The soft light set a rather castle-like feel, of being closed up and closed in, and the private All Souls' feast and prayers seemed almost ritualistic as they did every year—honor for the dead.

Eliott sat near his mother, bejeweled and equally as talkative as Eliott, and next to them were William and his parents. The Witch was present, and Petyr, the Blond One, and the men and women in between that connected each one of them to the Ruslaniv name.

At a corner to his father's left, Levi sat opposite his mother and ate his dinner in silence. And, probably, his mother was taking mental notes on how he was too withdrawn, too steely, giving off an air of melancholy not proper for his social stature.

Lord Ruslaniv didn't notice, of course. He was always talking, his boisterous voice and quixotic gestures booming down to the opposite end of the hall as servants hurried back and forth like animated pieces of furniture, just a handful of tiny cogs in the clockwork of the house.

In the billiards room afterward, BLACK wasn't just cleaning their guns and shooting the breeze.

There was talk of recent activities and current events, and as Levi polished the lever on one of his pump actions, a cigarette balanced on his lower lip and the smoke curling up, silky and smooth, into his hair, he felt all eyes fall on him as the talk turned to the latest scheme: infiltrating the Dietrich house.

“What's the news on that?” William prompted.

“How did St. Vincent's go?” the One with Glasses spoke up.

“Swell,” Levi grumbled, flicking cigarette ash into an ornate crystal dish and refusing to meet any of his teammates' stares. He still felt rather detached and disoriented—he always felt that way when his intentional solitude in the library was interrupted. He just couldn't bring his mind back around, for eternities, it seemed. Or maybe he was just exhausted today.

“Just swell?” the Witch pressed.

Levi sighed. He shrugged and leaned back in the brown leather armchair and crossed one leg over the other, finally reviewing them all as if he were a man considering his possessions. He shrugged, offering a half-cocked smirk.

He wasn't sure why he dreaded saying it to them. In all honesty, he just wanted it to be his little secret. But the words simply pried their way out, and he felt guilty for confessing, like it was something meant to be private.

It wasn't, though. That was the problem.

“Well,” he said, and he knew they were all on the edge of their seats. “Anonymity is a man's best friend, you see. And in my anonymity, I've been contracted by the Earl Dietrich as a freelance gunslinger.”

Their laughter and sneers at the Earl's stupidity only made him feel worse for admitting it. He was protective over his own half of the scheme, for whatever reason. And before bed, when he said his last holiday prayers for the dead, he kissed his fingertips, made the sign of the cross, and pinched out the candles in his room feeling strangely dissatisfied with the world.

 

 

F
INALLY
,
BY
the end of Hallowmas—which was more an excuse to drink and be merry lately than anything to respect beyond tradition—Cain sent a message in code to the apartment on the Rue. He decided that if Levi was sharp enough to decode the hidden missive, he was a worthy enough candidate for hidden ace. Surely he'd be able to pick up on the nuances in the note—the missing letters in misspelled words stringing together to form their own message, and that message was that if Levi were still interested in the position, they should meet again at the place of Levi's most recent favorite activity. Praying.